THE MAYERSON FIRM PLLC

By Marc Mayerson | August 30, 2005 For the past two decades, policyholders and insurers have been fighting over whether the cost of cleaning up hazardous-waste sites is covered under general-liability policies by arguing over the nature of that liability. The argument has tended to center on the meaning of the word “damages” and the insuring agreement’s promise to afford indemnification for the sums payable “as damages.” Departing somewhat from the standard version of these a

An artist-photographer named Thomas Condon made the Cincinnati morgue his studio. His photographs of corpses, taken without the permission of the next of kin, led to civil and criminal proceedings. And, inevitably, an insurance case. The principal theory of coverage was for “personal injury”. Condon’s carrier provided him a defense to the civil proceedings while filing suit for a declaration of no coverage. The opinion reads as though the Ohio court of appeals was as offended